A month and a half following the September 11 terrorist incident in the United States, the Congress approved the USA PATRIOT Act. The title of the act is a ten letter acronym (USA PATRIOT) that stands for Uniting (and) Strengthening America (by) Providing Appropriate Tools Required (to) Intercept (and) Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 (Edwards, 2018). The Patriot Act was enacted with the respectful purpose of discovering and taking legal action against global terrorists that are doing their operations within the American borders. Nonetheless, the ill-fated impacts of the Patriot Act have so far been severe. Several provisions portrayed in the Patriot Act completely violate the Constitution of the United States of America. Judicious men such as Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and James Madison created the US Constitution with a bid to safeguard the rights as well as freedoms of Americans, which the Patriot Act has compromised greatly (Wralstad & Lutz, 2014) . This paper is going to demonstrate how the Patriot Act diminishes our individual freedoms under the American Constitution, therefore, not an ethical exercise of power.
The Patriot Act is not an ethical exercise of power as it violates the revered First and Fourth Amendment rights. The First Amendment rights focus on the protection of free speech and expression of people, whereas the Fourth Amendment right shields the populace against undeserved search and arrest. The Patriot Act gives way for unethical and unconstitutional investigation of the citizens of the nation with an insignificant heightening of national safety and security (Gardener, 2015). Free speech, freethinking, as well as a free American routine, may not prevail in the atmosphere of suspicion and endless anxiety fashioned by the Patriot Act. Jeremy Bentham could have supported this Patriot Act because the end must not justify the means for him. If the Patriot Act achieves its good goal of protecting the nation against the influence of international terrorists within its border, it is good (Taylor, Fritsch, & Liederbach, 2014). Kant’s perspective would resist the Patriot Act right from the beginning. Considering the freedom to speech, freedom to thinking and other rights that are trespassed, Kant cannot appreciate the act from the onset. He believed the process to any outcome must be honorable and cause happening from the start.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
The Patriot Act is not an ethical exercise of power as it gives the government the liberty to scout any of its nationals, not just the bad ones. This situation is a scary feature of the Patriot Act. Modern American legislators and representatives have lost the authority to reinforce significant principles that promote individual liberty upon which lays the foundation of the nation. Ideals such as civil rights, individual freedom as well as the right to privacy inadequately addressed. Byers (2017) discovered that even a newspaper editor might not freely produce a piece that criticizes the government – even if it is lawful – as he may fear that, his thought and actions may be investigated. The Patriot Act does not care if there is enough evidence on the suspected persons are involved in the criminal activities before giving the government power to search and make arrests (Wralstad & Lutz, 2014) . Even worse, American citizens can be considered suspects of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to be seized based on how they demonstrate their First Amendment rights.
Kant has a precise perspective on the moral worth of an action and holds that a practice is considered either right or wrong by itself and not by the effects it produces. Kant’s school of thought may not support the Patriot Act since its operations can easily be confirmed to be too much restrictive than beneficial. Kant (2017) maintains that a practice is right or wrong because of whether or not it was carried out to respond to a problem. Kant considers the motivation behind any move taken a maxim. If the maxim (the end result) is warranted, then the action is an obligation. Therefore, Kant would only support the existence of Patriot Act if only the creators of it felt it right that the end result that motivated the move would be justified as a universal law that is if it could be applicable to all people. In this case, the Patriot Act was made with the international terrorists in mind and neglecting the freedoms and rights of American citizens as enshrined in the constitution. Indeed, the Patriot Act does not protect American freedoms and rights but rather exposes citizens to possible exploitations of power by forming an atmosphere that promotes government’s corrupt practices, concealment, fraud and discriminatory activities (Wralstad & Lutz, 2014) . This would occur even as “national security” claims is used as a fabrication for disrupting foundational constitutional rights such as privacy as well as free speech.
The Patriot Act is not an ethical exercise of power and it is only one senator that could see this when the 96 in the Senate passed it. Senator Feingold was the only one that voted against the proposed Patriot Act before it had been signed to law. The opinions that he raised against the Patriot Act in September, as well as October of 2001, are still verifying the negative impacts the Act has posed on American life and up to the time, it will stop being a law (Taylor, Fritsch, & Liederbach, 2014). Feingold contended that the Americans would not defeat the terrorists at all if they take the approach of infringing the freedoms and rights of the American people. He found the Patriot Act as one that was not counter-productive as he did not understand the point of the Americans sacrificing their freedoms to buy security. Maintaining security may be a big challenge if the rights and freedoms of American people cannot be defended. According to Byers (2017), the move to adopt the Patriot Act could only offer a very short-lived safety and deny the citizens the fundamental liberty. The Patriot Act does not have the interests of the American people at heart since it forfeits important civil rights that the Bill of Rights had issued to the people in 1776 (Edwards, 2018).
Bentham welcomes the standard of utilitarianism that examines an action on the grounds of its impacts. The only significant impacts, however, are the general happiness attained for all individuals influenced by the action. Bentham considers that what eventually encourage us are happiness and pain, and thus, happiness results from an aspect of feeling gratification without pain. Moreover, pain, as well as happiness, makes us be able to decide what we are supposed to do and what we ultimately do. According to Bentham (2014), happiness and pain are coherent with the principle of right and wrong, and a sequence of causes and outcomes. Considering the standard of utility, a practice should be embraced only if it boosts the pleasure that an individual or groups whose interests is determined. Four factors are significant in assessing the pain or happiness that an action produces: its strength, its length as regards to time, its inevitability or uncertainty, and proximity to the people (Pike, 2015). Therefore, according to Bentham, Patriot Act would be an ethical exercise of power in the sense that even though the Americans will experience the pain of losing their liberties; they will be secured from international terrorists, which act as the ultimate pleasure.
At some point, there is no debate by some Americans on the Patriot Act being unethical in its application. It clearly defies the critical American standard of checks and balances on the operations of the government. Usually, the government should not do a search on any American citizen’s home without having a warrant and confirming that a suspected crime that has potentially been committed is there. However, the Patriot Act defies the Fourth Amendment as it makes the government have the freedom to do searches without issuing any warrant, for just any simple reason (Wralstad & Lutz, 2014) . Any confrontation of such an action directly to the FBI will have suggestions to assure people that it is necessary to conduct the search for national security and they have the authority of acting the way they please. Kant’s position will rebuke the activities in which the FBI abuses the power given to them through the Patriot Act. Kant’s idea would only support that the FBI gets a warrant from an independent Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court before searching for any home. If this could be applied, the FBI could not have abused the authority given to them by the Patriot Act (Pike, 2015). The FISA court hardly rejects any search warrant. The implication of this is that any FBI who desires to spy wrongly a fellow American citizen can do so as provided by the Patriot Act, void of enough evidence.
The Patriot Act is not an ethical exercise of power as far as you consider processes employed by the United States’ government in its ability to monitor the suspects. Assuredly, the government has the mandate to monitor the movements of the terrorists, but this must be done in an acceptable way (Wralstad & Lutz, 2014) . The Patriot Act does not provide an appropriate balance between securing American lives against the attacks of terrorists and securing American rights from the possibility of government abuse. Specifically, the most unfortunate section of the act is the one that gives significant provisions intended to broaden extensively the authority of the government, without room for objection by the nations. These critical provisions come with almost limitless possibility for abuse. Kant’s line of thought sensitizes us to such provisions, as he explains the aspect of will (Kant, 2017). Applying the analogy of Kant, provisions such as those in the Patriot Act should be examined to determine the intention of those who made it. If the intention was to eliminate checks and balances to the government in their operations, then such a law is wrong. Kant’s theory of how to look at scenarios is more authentic than Bentham’s theory as far as the Patriot Act is concerned. This is because Kant’s theory is interested in the intention of having something and not just the results it will produce. Thus, if an in-depth analysis of constituting Patriot Act revealed that the intentions were not right, it could not have been adopted in the first place considering Kant’s theory.
Section 505 is another intimidating aspect of Patriot Act that is exercised unethically. The section encourages the utilization of national security letters (NSLs) that can be submitted to FBI. NSLs legally force an organization to provide personal records about specific people. Earlier, the FBI could utilize NSLs for accessing information of foreign agents and well-known terrorists, but Section 505 of Patriot Act also considers non-terrorists suspects who can be included to be investigated by FBI through NSLs (Gardener, 2015). Through this, FBI can illegitimately acquire information about citizens using NSLs once they have been involved in a criminal activity. Section 505 infringes the Fifth Amendment’s “due process of law” phrase. No American citizen is supposed to be disadvantaged in his or her freedoms, without due process of law. Therefore, the Patriot Act permits the FBI to evade the due process as required by the law and retrieve the data they need about an individual.
Even though some American citizens may assume and appear not to care about the Patriot Act and may not have anything to keep from the government, it is completely risky. To begin with, if the American citizens would recognize that their actions and engagement over the phone or everywhere is being watched, they cannot be free to express themselves (Pike, 2015). Their privilege to share their thoughts and exercise the rights to free communication and thinking will be hindered. This is considerably the case if the individual’s thoughts are not what the government would appreciate. Secondly, by interfering with American civil rights to have a feeling of security, Americans are in real sense helping the terrorists to attain their mission of abolishing democratic standards in the western world. The last ground to resist this Patriot Act is because it is a direct infringement of American values and standards (Taylor, Fritsch, & Liederbach, 2014). The Patriot Act fundamentally terminates the defenses given by the First and Fourth Amendments and makes the citizens vulnerable to possible abuses at the mercy of intimidators and the government.
In conclusion, defending the Americans from foreign threats is crucial. The Federal government has an obligation to do whatever is in their reach to ensure the safety of their people. However, this cannot be done at the expense of the civil rights of the citizens. Undoubtedly, the Patriot Act embodies an evolving trend in the government of the US today – a tendency of forfeiting American ideals in place of security. The revolutionary war that the Americans fought was to give them fundamental liberties that they felt humans should not live without. Kant’s line of thought critics this Patriot Act as it applies to the American citizens, as opposed to Bentham’s ideas. Therefore, Americans should not quickly surrender their freedoms and rights that have been upheld for a long time as the basis of their society, for the simple trickery of security.
References
Bentham, J. (2014). Deontology; or, The Science of Morality.: In two volumes . Adegi Graphics LLC.
Byers, A. (2017). USA freedom act vs. USA Patriot Act.
Edwards, F. (2018). US Individuals' Perceptions of Government Electronic Surveillance After Passage of the USA Patriot Act.
Gardner, S. A. (2015). The 4th Amendment to the US Constitution, Article 3 of the ALA Code of Ethics, and Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act: Squaring the Triangle.
Kant, I. (2017). Civilization and enlightenment: ‘Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View9. In Classical Readings on Culture and Civilization (pp. 47- 55). Routledge.
Pike, G. H. (2015). Legal Issues: USA Patriot Act Still Raising Questions.
Taylor, R. W., Fritsch, E. J., & Liederbach, J. (2014). Digital crime and digital terrorism . Prentice Hall Press.
Wralstad, G., & Lutz, J. M. (2014). USA Patriot Act. The encyclopedia of criminology and criminal justice , 1-5.
